


memories of happier days

by Merrom



Category: Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: Childhood Memories, Coming of Age, Family, Feels, Gen, Growing Up, One Shot, like lots and lots of feels I'm not even kidding, lots of feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 14:04:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1390513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merrom/pseuds/Merrom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“I’ll always be here for you,” she says, but Claire sees the bags under her eyes, the unhealthy pallor to her skin, her trembling arms which seem so much skinnier than before, and Claire wonders for the first time if her mother may be lying.</i> </p><p>A fic about Claire Farron growing up and eventually becoming Lightning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	memories of happier days

**Author's Note:**

> I finished Lightning Returns a couple of weeks ago and some of the stuff Lightning said just made me really want to write about baby!Lightning and baby!Lightning being a good big sister to baby!Serah and them growing up together but it somehow turned into this..............
> 
> nobody touch me ok I am a wreck of emotions and pain
> 
> fun fact: this was written for a portfolio and I removed all fandom references and every instance of Serah's name and the surname Farron and I got accepted for the programme I applied for. so wHO SAYS FANFICTION WRITING ISN'T PRODUCTIVE HUH

At six years old, Claire Farron is precocious, energetic, and a mighty warrior princess.

She jumps from the table to the sofa, wildly swinging the toy sword clutched in her little hand, its chipped wooden blade cutting an arc through the empty air that is, in her mind, a huge behemoth coming to terrorize her kingdom. Her pink skirt, already torn in several places, catches on the corner of the table and rips again as she ducks under the monster’s imaginary legs and brings her Legendary Weapon crashing through its skull.

Her baby sister giggles with delight as she brings up the sword to strike a triumphant pose. Later in the night her mother will scold her for tearing the skirt yet again, but for now she’s content to regale Serah with tales of her fearless and daring exploits that she wouldn’t quite understand for a few years more.

* * *

Claire is eight years old, and there are monsters under her little sister’s bed. Or at least that’s what Serah claims.

Said little sister is currently huddled in the midst of Claire’s blankets, wide-eyed and afraid. The teachers in Serah’s preschool have been educating the children about the horrors of Pulse, and coupled with some of the stories the boys have been telling, Serah has somehow become convinced that some unholy demon from the hellish lower-world has taken up residence in her room. Frankly, Claire just wants to tell Serah how silly she’s being, but she resists the urge to do so. After all, she has to be a Good Big Sister, so instead she heads there herself, armed with her toy sword at her sister’s insistence.

The first thing she does when in her sister’s room is, of course, to check under the bed for monsters, because you can never be too sure, and the result is exactly as she’d expected: dust balls and paper scraps and eraser shavings and various sad, forgotten toys and everything else you’d expect to find in a five-year-old’s bedroom. Basically, not monsters.

Satisfied, Claire prepares to leave. Before she can do that, though, she has a final task to do.

“Take that! And that!” she yells, whacking the pillow on the bed with the toy sword and making sure she’s yelling loud enough for Serah to hear. “Don’t you dare terrorize my sister again! Hi- _yah_!”

With that final exclamation, she smacks the pillow with all her strength, making a very loud _thump_ sound in the process. It’s a silly thing to do, she knows, but she will always protect her baby sister from any monster that threatens her. Even the imaginary ones.

* * *

Claire is eleven years old, and she can talk the ears of off people.

Between the Farron girls, Serah had always been the shy one, preferring to hide behind Claire, and lately their mother’s been feeling more and more tired, so it falls to Claire to take up most of the conversation with others. Today, though, she is sitting alone in the waiting room of the hospital, swinging her legs back and forth while she waits for her mother’s check-up to end.

She hears the latch of the door click and glances up, but the person who enters the room is not her mother.

“Hello, Claire,” the doctor says warmly, as he takes the seat opposite her. He reaches up to take off his spectacles as she grins at him, and they chat for a while about idle topics (“Are you and your sister okay?”, “How are things at home?”, “How’ve you been doing in school?”, and so on and so forth).

Claire likes the doctor because he always listens patiently to her responses, instead of cutting her off like some others do and she’s in the middle of answering his third inquiry (“I’m still doing well, thank you; the other day in math, there was this really hard question,but I…”) when her mother emerges from the door, and Claire immediately notices that her eyes are red and swollen.

The doctor’s parting words to her are: “You’re a brave girl, Claire. Make sure you and your sister are good,”, but Claire doesn’t understand the significance of this.

* * *

A few days later, Claire comes home from school to find her mother crying.

Claire asks her what’s wrong, and if it had anything to do with the hospital visit, but all her mother says is, “Everything’s all right,”, and adults don’t ever lie or say untruthful things, so Claire believes her and forgets about it.

* * *

Claire is twelve, and she is seated in the Principal's office. Beside her sits her somewhat worried and anxious mother, holding her hand. Claire is determinedly not looking at the boy and mother seated in a similar fashion beside them, and glaring intensely at the man opposite them.

"Mrs Farron," the Principal is saying, "you have to make your daughter understand that she cannot go around punching people."

"But I don't go around punching people," Claire objects indignantly.

"She refuses to apologise, or even show remorse for what she did. This behaviour is frankly unacceptable," he continues blandly.

"He pulled Serah's hair," she says angrily. "Was I supposed to just let him do that?"

"You should have let the teacher deal with it."

"The teacher knew. She didn't do anything." Claire stares defiantly at the Principal. "She said that he was just teasing her because he liked her. Which is stupid. Because if he liked her he wouldn't have hurt her."

Hotblooded though she may be, Claire isn't usually so confrontational, but she will never, _ever_ let anyone harm her baby sister and get away with it.

* * *

 In the end, Claire and the boy both end up with detention but later that night her mother calls her over to talk to her, long after Serah has gone to bed.

“Claire,” her mother says softly.

"Yes, Mama?"

Lately her mother hasn't had the energy to talk in anything more than a low voice, so Claire strains to listen to what she has to say.

"I know that you were punished for it, but I just want to say that I'm proud of you for what you did."

"You're proud that I punched a boy?"

"I'm proud of your strong sense of justice, and that you wouldn’t back down from your beliefs. I’m proud that you choose to stand up for those who are not protected by authority." Her mother smiles faintly at her. "And I’m proud that you stood up for your sister. Though next time you should try not to punch anyone.”

They share a laugh over this, though Claire is a bit confused as to why her mother is praising her for things which she should have been doing anyway.

"Promise me that you’ll always take care of your sister,” her mother says, and Claire readily agrees without so much as a second thought to wonder why her mother would suddenly want her to.

* * *

Claire is fourteen, and she and Serah are spending the night in the hospital ward that their mother has just been admitted to.

“I’ll always be here for you,” she says, but Claire sees the bags under her eyes, the unhealthy pallor to her skin, her trembling arms which seem so much skinnier than before, and Claire wonders for the first time if her mother may be lying.

* * *

Claire is fifteen years old and trying to complete a worksheet in class when she receives the news.

When they first say it she doesn’t quite register what’s going on, not at first, and the teacher, white-faced, leads her back into the classroom, with an arm around her shoulders for support. As if Claire is too fragile to be left to her own devices, a porcelain doll filled with emotions that are threatening to break through the surface and pour out in torrents that she would drown in.

Claire’s face is totally blank; she mechanically moves her feet one in front of the other. Step, step, step, until she reaches her seat, and she falls into the chair with a light thud. Her face has not moved an inch this whole time. Her eyes stare vacantly at the worksheet on the table she’d been doing a moment ago, but now it seems so distant, so irrelevant. What had she been doing? Math, history, chemistry? She doesn't remember.

She picks up her pen. Had she really only been holding this a moment ago? It feels so foreign in her hand now. Everything feels strange. She hears voices, but not words. She sees shapes, but not objects. The world is blurry and unfocused, shaking unsteadily as if she is a fixed point on top of which the world balances. Or perhaps the other way round.

Claire realizes that she’s crying.

* * *

The next few days pass by in a blur. She and Serah are assaulted by whirlwinds of family friends and what few relatives they have, enduring greeting after greeting followed by the same assortment of stock phrases uttered at them over and over and over again.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” _Liar_.

“If there’s anything I can do to help, I will.” _Liar_.

“I’ll pray for you.” _As if that did any good before_.

Claire stands at the door, one arm curled protectively around Serah's quaking shoulders, receiving each passing condolence with an increasingly emotionless face, even as her sister turns to bury her face in her shoulder. People come to her, making promises they never intended to follow up on, offering sympathy they didn't really feel. They just keep talking at her, and she does not say anything. She sees now how meaningless words can be. She does not want to trust them anymore.

* * *

She hears Serah cry herself to sleep every night, and she doesn't know what to do.

Claire leans back against her bedroom wall, her knees drawn to her chest. She wants to go into her sister’s room and hug her and tell her that everything will be all right, but Heaven knows they've had enough of that from the past few days. If only this problem could also be solved by taking a toy sword to a pillow, but those days are far behind them now.

At one point she starts wondering why her mother isn't trying to comfort Serah yet, before she returns to the present with a jolt, and just like that, she starts crying all over again.

Claire remembers a game she used to play as a child, one where she pretended to be a warrior princess. She remembers the feelings of confidence and invincibility she possessed whenever she engaged in her little role-play. She is no longer a child, and the wooden sword has long been tucked away in the deepest recesses of her closet, but she feels like it’s time to pull out her fearless warrior princess persona once again.

Claire allows herself to cry for three minutes, and then she forces herself to stop. She has to be strong for Serah. She will not cry again.

* * *

Claire is sixteen, and her grades in school are slipping.

As she'd predicted, none of the promises to help they'd been offered a year ago have been followed up on, and Claire is single-handedly raising Serah as best as she can.

There simply isn't enough time in Claire's life to manage everything that she is supposed to do, between school, her part-time job, and home. So she has been doing tasks according to priority, and what examination, however important, could be more so than making sure Serah has a meal on the table?

The teacher tells her that she can either buck up or drop out. She listens to this with a straight face and nods, and after that day she never goes back.

* * *

There aren't a lot of places willing to offer a job to a sixteen-year-old high school dropout, but the military is one of them, so Claire goes to sign up with the Bodhum Security Regiment of the Guardian Corps.

It's been in the back of her mind for a while, but as she fills in the application sheet, Claire decides that she cannot be Claire any longer. Claire is merely a child, incapable of taking care of even herself. How, then, could Claire ever hope to take care of her sister too? She needs to become someone new. Someone like the warrior princess she used to pretend to be – mature and independent like the wind, beautiful and deadly like the storm, and most of all, strong. Strong enough to take care of Serah. 

She signs her name as "Lightning Farron".

* * *

Claire was too weak to protect Serah. Claire was easily distracted by her own selfish needs. Claire was too soft to survive in the world. Maybe Lightning will succeed where Claire could never.


End file.
